John Hughes says, “Moving your website from one host to another is often touted as a complicated process, but it can actually be quite simple. All it takes is a few steps, and your site will be up and running once more – this time on a different (and better) host. The only trick lies in pulling off the process with no downtime. If there’s one thing you never want your website to be, it’s down for the count. The good news is you’ll only need five steps – as we’ll show you in this piece. However, before that let’s take a moment to talk about the dangers of downtime, and what... [...]

Michele Linn says, “Are you looking for ways to get your content out there while saving time? If so, have you considered republishing your best-performing posts? This past year, we experimented with republishing our best posts on CMI. Thus far, the results are impressive. The republished posts perform well in terms of traffic, social shares, and email conversions. Additionally, they save our editorial team time. Of course, republishing posts is not a new idea. Many sites use this approach. However, we have had a specific challenge at CMI: Our URLs contain the year and month of publication.... [...]

Karola Karlson says, “There are countless ways to promote your blog content, but most of them are incredibly time-consuming. While reaching out to influencers or earning backlinks are both superior tactics, marketers rarely have the time to complete these tasks. With Facebook Audience Network now reaching over 1 billion people every month, the social media platform is increasingly popular among marketers. And there’s a good reason for it: Facebook’s highly specific audience-targeting allows you to reach just the right people at the right time. Here’s why you should promote your content... [...]

Matt McGee says, “WordPress has released version 4.7.3 of its uber-popular content management system, and “strongly encourages” users to update right away to take advantage of the six security fixes it includes. The company says previous versions are impacted by these security issues: Cross-site scripting (XSS) via media file metadata. Control characters can trick redirect URL validation. Unintended files can be deleted by administrators using the plugin deletion functionality. Cross-site scripting (XSS) via video URL in YouTube embeds. Cross-site scripting (XSS) via taxonomy term names. Cross-site... [...]

Sophia Bernazzani says, “If you thought your research days were over when you graduated from high school or college, think again. If you create any kind of content as part of your role, your arguments should be well-supported with data. Why is research so important? It makes your claims credible, your content authoritative, and helps you earn more social shares and backlinks. In fact, an analysis of over one million articles from Moz and BuzzSumo revealed that research-backed content generates more shares and more backlinks than other content types. The thing is, finding the research to cite... [...]

Bill Widmer says, “Have you ever seen a blog post and thought, “Wow, this looks really nice”? On the flip side, have you seen a post with a wall of text and no images, and thought, “Wow, this looks really ugly”? Did you even read the second one? Your posts’ text needs to engage your readers to keep them coming back, but first your posts need to be visually appealing to attract those readers. An attractive blog post will: – Increase reader engagement (e.g., time on page, comments, shares, CTA clicks) – Drive backlinks from top-ranking blogs”. Beauty Matters: 3 Tips... [...]

Will Caldwell says, “In today’s world of online marketing, having a company blog is key. Blogs may sound old-school, but without one, you’ll be leaving a lot of traffic out of the picture. The fact of the matter is that a blog can help your company can engage with its customers in an interesting way by providing valuable insight into your product or market. The most traditional reason companies have their own blog is to express their opinion. Now, with the rise in content marketing, companies use their blogs to compete for traffic. Marketers take a long-tail keyword approach, meaning... [...]

Jay Baer says, “As an author, it breaks my heart, but we are entering the “no-read” era.1 Every year, I think there is no possible way online video consumption can climb again, but it does. And finally, content marketers are catching up to the consumption trend. Video for content marketing used to be a sometimes thing. An occasional deviation from tried-and-true blog posts. But now, for many companies, video IS the new blogging. New research from Vidyard (a great partner of ours at Convince & Convert) called the 2017 Video in Business Benchmark Report to put math around this shift. According... [...]

Arash Asli says, “When it comes to trying to get your message out to your audience, there is no better way than blogging. Having a blog on your business website can increase the amount of authority you have in your industry, while at the same time helping you capture longer tail keywords and generating more traffic from organic search. What if I told you that you can not only massively increase the number of people that see your content, but also be in more places than you ever thought possible? 1. Create a powerpoint presentation and put it on Slideshare Slideshare is an important and popular... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Maybe you have two separate blogs that deal with two elements of your overall business. Maybe you’re rebranding your business and need to rebrand your blog. Perhaps you recently acquired another company and want to incorporate its blog into your own. Or maybe you purchased a relevant domain for the SEO juice and need to transfer your existing blog to it. How do you combine two blogs into one? Here’s how. Before we do anything, though, back up each existing blog. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume you’re merging two WordPress blogs. It doesn’t really matter... [...]